


Hate walks across the sands, uncaring. (Kenobi Lives)

by subspace31



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Episode: s03e20 Twin Suns, Ignores Large Parts of Star Wars: Rebels, Mainly Ezra, Unreliable Narrator, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-09
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-07-28 17:37:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16246541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/subspace31/pseuds/subspace31
Summary: Because what's the point of having a galactic criminal empire if you can't make sure one man stays dead?Or how Darth Maul made one last impression on the galaxy, even as he set his legacy ablaze.Or how Twin Suns should've gone.





	Hate walks across the sands, uncaring. (Kenobi Lives)

**Author's Note:**

> References to Rebels, but no actually content. Removes Ezra from Tatooine altogether. I don't own Star Wars, unfortunately.

Maul thought that he’d spent the last twenty years fairly successful. He’d uncovered Sith artifacts and wealth like none other. He’d built a criminal empire, then had it fall, only to rise again stronger than before as the Shadow Collective.  He’d conquered Mandalore, then lost it, then won and lost it again. He’d been stranded a few times, and wasted a few years in misery, but he always crawled his way up from the ashes.

None of it mattered. Kenobi lived.

Currently he seethed at his holo-transponder, at the brat who’d replaced Dryden Vos. She stared back at him, sputtering like a Bantha with a stab wound. “B-But sir, if y-you intend on calling in-”

“Every favor, yes,” he growled, impatient to death of having to repeat himself.

“To find a  _ dead man _ ?” she shrieked incredulously.

“Kenobi. Lives.” He squeezed down on the force for a moment, and even though she was across the galaxy, he watched her flinch and swallow, desperately trying to save face.

“If he…” she started, but frantically backpedaled as he curled his fingers, clenched in his lap, inwards. “H-He does live, but if you intend to - to fight him…”

“I do not intend to fight him. I intend to kill him,” he corrected curtly.

“You - you should at least appoint a successor. In case, something were to go wrong.” Her eyes indicated wariness, and a bit of apprehension. He knew what she was trying to do.

“The strongest,” he decided, and he cut the transmission.

Later, on Tatooine, he heard whispers that a fool named Qi’ra had claimed that Darth Maul was dead, but that he had appointed her his heir before he died. She had been slaughtered and the Shadow Collective had dissolved. He found he couldn’t care. Kenobi lived.

* * *

 

It astonished him how useless people could be. Decades of favors across a criminal empire, and all it got him to was a planet. Granted, he tended to kill more people than keep them alive for favors, but the ones who stayed alive could’ve at least given him Kenobi’s head on a platter.

No, he wanted to put Kenobi’s head on that platter himself.

Yet, the planet they did give him was ironic, to say the least; Tatooine. Where’d first fought Qui-Gon Jinn. Where he’d first caught Kenobi’s Force scent. Where it all began.

How funny it was, for Kenobi, the paragon of virtue and lawfulness, was wasting away on a desert junkhole. How funny it was for him to be left with nothing, just as he was so many years ago. How funny it would be for Kenobi to be gutted on the very world his master should’ve been slaughtered on. The only thing sweeter would be if it were to be Naboo instead. Nonetheless, he’d be sure to enjoy this.

As he landed on Tatooine, he’d immediately shivered with the taste of Kenobi on the Force. It was true. He was here. Kenobi lived. He stayed in that spot, frozen, milking in his brewing hate and the faint remnant of Kenobi’s misery alike. As he entered Mos Eisley, however, he’d realized it may be deeper than that. Kenobi had been here, but his scent was stale and old. He’d have to dig deep to get his prize.

The cantina was full of every shady individual under the sun. If Kenobi were to live here, undercover from the Empire for so long, he must have associated with at least a few of them. All he had to do was to get them to talk. That wouldn’t be hard. He could be very charming.

He walked into the dingy, dimly lit bar. Bounty Hunters lay sprawled across the room, negotiating contracts, taking in a drink, and generally basking in a atmosphere of faux relaxation. Music blared from a band on stage. A group of men bearing Jabba’s sign lounged at a booth, playing cards. Two of them had cards up their sleeves. The other had a blaster.

Maul stormed up to the bar, slamming his hand on the counter to get the barkeep’s attention. “I need the location of Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he growled.

The barkeep, a disgusting alien with large eyes and small tusks, only stared at him momentarily. “Never ‘eard of ‘im,” it spat, before returning to a conversation with a patron.

Maul wasn’t done. He grabbed the barkeep’s arm, spinning him around and forcing him to pay attention. “Think harder.”

“Ey, buddy,” drawled the heavily-intoxicated patron the barkeep was serving. “Let a guy get a drink in peace.”

Maul ignored him, choosing instead to glower at the barkeep. The barkeep stammered, “I - I never heard of your f-friend, pal.”

The patron stood at that point. “Oi, red face! Lemme get my drink!” He grabbed Maul’s other arm.

In one fluid motion, Maul let go of the barkeep, activated his saber, and cut off the hand of the fool who’d grabbed him. A shriek silenced the bar as all the patrons turned to look at Maul, his red saber glowing brighter than any of the lights. After a moment of consideration, they turned back to their conversations and the band began to play again.

Maul didn’t like that. He stabbed the fool again, this time through the stomach. He let out another strangled scream, bringing all the attention back to Maul. “I am looking for Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Maul announced to the bar in a seethingly firm voice. “Any information on his whereabouts would be  _ greatly _ appreciated.”

Another long silence filled the room. Everyone nervously shifted amongst themselves. Finally, the barkeep spoke up slowly. “You're outta luck, pal. Ain’t nobody here know your friend.”

Maul took his head before leaving. Somebody had to know Kenobi. It was just a matter of finding them.

* * *

 

Travelling for days on end without food or water through a desert was brutal, but his own suffering fueled Maul’s sense of the Dark Side, and that was all he had to track Kenobi. He could sense the tendrils of Kenobi’s purity wrapped around  _ something _ in the desert, but he just couldn’t decipher what. After days - weeks... after so long of walking that he had lost all concept of time, Maul came across a small moisture farm in the middle of nowhere with a boy standing outside watching the sunset.

There was something… familiar, about the boy. Maul tried to focus on it, but the pure anger that shredded his mind  _ (Kenobi Lives)  _  made it impossible to concentrate. He must have made some noise, because the boy turned around, and a blend of confusion and excitement flared across his face.

“Oh! Are you alright?” He began to rush down the hill, but stopped nervously when Maul reached a hand under his robe and rested his fingers on his saber. 

There _was_ something familiar about the youth - in the face, in the voice - but thirst burnt through his thoughts and blurred his vision before he could make it out. All he managed to say was a strangled, “Kenobi.”

The youth crushed his face in confusion some more. “Kenobi,” he thought aloud. “You couldn’t mean Old Ben Kenobi, could you?”

Maul started, his vision snapping back to perfect clarity on the first hint of a clue that Kenobi existed in this sinkhole of a planet. It could’ve been a relation, or an alias… but Maul had spent years in The Clone Wars hunting for a way to make Kenobi hurt - he had no family - and no sane person hiding from the Empire would take the name of the most famous Jedi.

“Where?” Maul breathed. It came so easily all of a sudden. Anticipation flooded his muscles.

“Out in the dune sea, thataway,” the youth revealed reluctantly, gesturing with his arms in the appropriate direction. “But the desert is dangerous at night, and you really should come in for some water, at least…”

His words fell on deaf ears as Maul stalked off into the desert with more fervor than before. Kenobi  _ lived _ .

* * *

 

It took some more days of walking, wondering, suffering, until he came upon a burning campfire and an old man. The voices of the dark side, the ones that powered him through the desert, whispering substance and promises of revenge against Kenobi, fell dead silent when the man turnt, and Maul almost cried in relief.

The man was old. Wrinkles scarred his face where once none were, his hair had long turnt white where it was rich brown, and there was pity in his eyes where he only looked at Maul with fury before, but this, more than any other proof, more than the boy, the holocrons, the force itself, proved that Kenobi lived.

“Look what has become of you,” Maul sighed in faux despair. “A  _ rat  _ in the desert.”

“Look what I have risen above,” the insufferable voice, distorted by time and age, shot back, tinted with the same snark that sent Maul’s blood boiling so many years ago.

“I’ve come to kill you,” Maul confessed. “But perhaps it's worse to leave you here, festering in your squalor.”

“If you define yourself by your power to take life, a desire to dominate, to possess, then you have nothing.”

Maul’s eyes narrowed and his fake sympathy disappeared. Here Kenobi was, about to die, and he  _ dared _ to lecture him, with dignity and grace and pompous righteousness? Maul had  _ suffered _ these last twelve years.  _ And what had Kenobi done? _

“And what do  **_you_ ** have?” Maul screamed out, activating a single blade of his lightsaber and lashing out on the sand. The dust and wind summoned blew between them, quenching the fire. The red saber growling in the silence was the only source of light besides the starry night sky, barely bright enough to reveal Kenobi’s features alone.

“ _ Why _ have you come to this place? Not simply to hide,” Maul accused, carefully watching those features now. He had memorized them, from every fight, his reaction to every taunt. His defiance, his despair, his hate. He pictured, every night, what they would’ve looked like if he could’ve been the one to sink his blade through Kenobi’s heart. What they would look like now. 

“No, you have a purpose here. Perhaps you are protecting something.” His face didn’t budge, react, move. A silent stone wall, in the middle of the ruined desert, staring at his death. “No,” Maul tried again, “Protecting some _ one. _ ”

His mind went to the youth standing on the hill watching the suns set, and Kenobi’s lightsaber burst into blue.

‘ _ Yes,’  _ Maul thought. He activated the dual end of his saber as well. He spun the blades, slicing through the quiet night air in a silent crescendo. He had waited years -  _ decades _ for this moment. Kenobi fell into his Soresu stance. His blade was cocked back and his arm extended. The universe hung frozen as it waited for one to move. Maul shifted and paced, restless. Old, weak, foolish Kenobi changed into the Ataru stance. 

‘ _ Oh, yes, _ ’ Maul realized; he would kill Kenobi the same way he killed Jinn. His feet shifting gave the only hint of his lunge, before he struck. He spun through the air, his blades whirring as they crashed into Kenobi’s. They clashed once - twice - before he went for the guard break, the pummel to the head that ended Jinn’s life long before the stab. Kenobi’s blade went up then down, bisecting his saber and slashing him down the middle.

Time stopped again. ‘ _ Oh, _ ’ Maul thought, then he fell.

He didn’t hit the ground. At least, he didn’t think so. No, he was being held by Kenobi. He couldn’t feel his lightsaber in his hands - right, it had been cut in half. He had been cut in half. Again, he supposed. That was funny. He couldn’t laugh.

He tried to focus, but his mind was slipping. There wasn’t pain. He looked up at Kenobi’s face. He swore he saw smugness at the end of their duel, but now he saw only sadness. Why was he sad?

‘ _ I’ve been a monster, _ ’ Maul realized. ‘ _ I’ve dedicated my life to this, and lost. I threw away my empire, my humanity. My brother. _ ’ He felt like crying.

“Tell me,” Maul choked out. His breath was gone and his vision was blurred, but he thought of Opress and pained out, “Is it the chosen one?”

Kenobi’s sad face slowly nodded. “He is.”

“He will avenge us,” Maul struggled, before he let go. He let go of his misery, his hate. His life.

Maul died in the middle of the desert of Tatooine, staring up at the face of the man he had hated his whole life and the starry sky of the galaxy. The night was quiet.


End file.
